Tayluca has moved to Thrifty Spot!

This blog has moved! I’ve moved from WordPress to ThriftySpot! You can view my blog’s new home at Tayluca.ThriftySpot.Com

Breaking World of Warcraft News is Breaking

Breaking News came out of MMO-Champion yesterday: Karazhan Map in Patch 4.1!

I have refrained from posting my critique and complaint about the upcoming patch as I’m sure no one wants to hear me say “zomg, lazy devs, regurgitating old content and calling it new” and boy am I glad I did!

I’d look like a total jackass if I had aired those complaints and then had to come back here and give you this latest announcement:

It’s barely been a measly 4 years, 2 months and 5 days since the release of The Burning Crusade expansion and ALREADY Blizzard is on the verge of releasing in-game maps to our favorite BC places such as Karazhan.

Do these devs even sleep? How do they find the time to give us these timely and useful updates? Finally, proof that the billions of dollars pooring into the BlizzActivision pockets are going towards innovative improvements and timely feature requests!

Democracy is for People

I’ve spent thirty years being what I call a Back Seat American. I live my life, I care for my family, and I let the “people in the know” do their jobs and run the country. I vote when asked (sometimes), I re-post links when requested, and then continue on my merry way doing what I’ve always done. It wasn’t until the last year or so that I really started paying attention to the world around me and I have to say, I am not pleased with the way things have been going. How do I make a difference when I haven’t been paying attention? How do I even begin to organize all of the information out there when so much of it is biased, disorganized, and sometimes even just incorrect reporting? More importantly, how can I teach my children the meaning of Democracy when all around me are examples of un-democratic actions by our leaders? I’ve been going around in circles about the MANY different issues that have become important to me lately and it’s been giving me a lot of stress and sleepless nights.

The Story of Stuff recently released their video “Citizens United v. FEC” and it was watching this video that things really just CLICKED. I won’t say that this movement is going to fix all of the things that are wrong with America but I WILL say that of all of the issues that have me staying up at night, almost all of them lead me back to this issue in one form or another. So to say this is important to me is an understatement and whether you agree with me on the various issues or not, I think we can all agree that Democracy is for People – and corporations have their hands and their interests in too much of our government. If you’re still with me, that’s awesome and I want to say THANK YOU! If not, I appreciate whatever of this post you managed to keep reading.

I’m going to share with you a video that is 8 min and 51 sec. All I ask is that you watch the video. If, after that, you’re still with me, I’ll post some important Q&A after the MORE as well as links that will give you more information and ways you can help.

I Accidentally the #Rift Headstart

A Twitter follower that is an ex-WOW player asked me yesterday if I would recommend Rift based on the small amount of time I’ve spent playing. Here’s my response, including some personal commentary which may or may not be relavent.

My WOW playtime has been little to zilch lately due to a lot of real life “stuff”. So finding time to play in some of the Rift Beta events has been like attempting to wrangle cats, blindfolded. I managed a solid 10 hours in one beta, 45 minutes in another, I *almost* logged in once in the last beta but just as my mouse hovered over the “Play” button, the kids aggro’d me and the beta client was left to sit alone in the corner. Then, why, you ask, did I “encourage” my husband to buy the digital collector’s edition for me for my birthday? KISS: This game fracking ROCKS!

I’ve been playing WOW for almost five years. That’s a really long time to dedicate to a virtual activity and one that, even on the best of days, is difficult to explain to my non-gamer friends and family. Those five years have been full of ups and downs and everything in between. I’ve played a few other games such as Aion, Runes of Magic, etc but mostly for that feeling of “ooh, something new” and never for a significant amount of time. I have friends and family in my WOW guild and it feels like “home” to me. But really, I’m so fracking tired of WOW that I can’t even put it into words. The first three years of wow were a whirlind of fanboy (uh, fangirl) extremism and cult like obsession with the franchise and the WOW community. The last two years have been a slowly dwindling activity that is done simply out of the sake of loyalty, to the franchise a little but mostly to my guild.

Many people I game with are feeling the same way as I am about WOW. They’re loyal to our gaming group and honestly, nothing has really come along that’s been worth the move so we just keep playing it. Then again, many simply said “sorry, I’d rather eat rat poop than keep playing this game.” A few of us play other games together occasionally, mostly FPS games, but in the end, our priority is always “the game” which is universally considered WOW. So, over time, I’ve begun to try to take our community that is “officially” WOW-centric and convert it to a multi-game community. It sounds great until you realize there’s just no other competition in the game market that has had as much of an impact on any of us as WOW has. Until now.

Rift Headstart started last week. I honestly only get an hour or two if I’m lucky in a given day to devote any time to it (more on some days, like my birthday, zomg 12 hours of nearly non-stop gaming, so fun) but every minute is spent in pure, unadulterated bliss. Does the game have flaws? Sure it has a few – but the game is so much fun that even when I sit down and try to think of the flaws, I barely have anything negative worth saying. When your BIGGEST complaint about a game is that you wish it had shared character banks or a guild bank (guild bank functions already slotted for inclusion in the next big update) than you really have to step back and wonder at what’s going on here.

When I try to explain Rift, it’s hard to do so without sounding like a total fangirl. Some may call it a copy of every other MMO out there but I like to think of it as a game that has included everything great you ever loved about any MMO and left out all the crap you hated — at game release! Polished, beautiful, and just fracking fun! You know that when you log on “for a few minutes to just do this one thing” and then a Rift invasion happens and suddenly you’ve lost two hours of your life without even realizing it, that either [1] you have a problem or [2] you just had a really kick ass two hours! I’ve had nothing but kick ass fun in the game so far.

Sadly, only myself and one of my other guildies so far have taken the bait and joined in the Rift action. If I were a millionaire I’d buy a copy for every one of my guildies (after solving that pesky world hunger problem of course) and we’d all be rifting it up by the weekend. So, until I can encourage more to join me, I’m stuck in that place where I’m playing one game to make other’s happy and another to make myself happy.

If you’re one of my “Keepers” we’re playing Defiant faction over on the Tearfall (pvp) shard. Come join us!

Get Off My Lawn!

I wasn’t going to post this as it’s really more “diary” than blog and contains a lot of complaining but I figure even if my mom is the only one who reads it, it’ll save me a phone call. XD

See more after the break.

Zombie Invasion Plan – Stage 1 – The First 72 Hours

I often joke about it being time to “enable Zombie Invasion Plan Stage 1″ but I have a few friends who don’t know the first thing about disaster preparedness and who I fully expect to be nursing back to health at the first sign of catastrophy. No offense guys. I’m not a crazy person, ok, maybe a little, but I also tend to make light of serious events with a little humor. I have a whole section on my computer devoted to disaster preparedness and it is aptly named The Zombie Invasion Plan. So here are a few tips, from me to you, on a maintenance day in which I find myself completely bored with nothing better to do.

Every good Zombie Hunter or Zombie Hunter In-Training needs a plan in place before the Zombiepacolypse begins. I like to call this Stage 1 of my Zombie Invasion Plan (ZIP). Stage 1 consists of preparing for the first 72 hours of a Zombie Invasion. For those who prefer to use this as a guide for more *cough*realistic*cough* events, feel free to insert words such as “Basic Disaster Preparedness”, “Unexpected Utility Outages”, “Earthquake”, “Blizzardageddon”, etc where you see the words “Zombie Invasion”. Since most disasters such as Zombie Invasions are unexpected events and could change on a whim based on the events, and we can never prepare for every possible scenario, I focus on two basic survival plans. I call them the “GTFO Plan” and the “Bunker Down Plan”. For both plans I will detail sensible plans of action that should be enacted now, before zombies strike. You should not wait until you see postings on Twitter such as “my neighbor is acting strange, dude totally just bit me! Feeling weird….. BRAIIIIIIIIIINS!”

NOTES FOR BOTH PLANS: I have some special notes regardless of which plan you go with. You may agree or disagree with these notes based on your personal preference but they bare listing.

[1] The First Rule of ZIP… there is no ZIP – I’m breaking my cardinal rule because I love you. But you should know that in the future, this discussion never took place. During Stage 1 of the ZIP, you keep your mouth shut. You are preparing yourself and/or your family for survival. Every person you let into that circle of survival is someone who’s survival you will be responsible for. People generally don’t prepare for disasters. If you tell Tom you are prepared for a disaster but Tom has not prepared, guess where Tom is going when disaster strikes. If you’re prepared to take in additional survivors, GREAT. I’m not one of those “it’s all about me” people but be aware that when the Zombies attack, it’s eat or be eaten. Choose carefully who you let into your circle of survival.

[2] Don’t be a Dick – Rule 2 does not counteract Rule 1. Yes, we want to keep our secrets to ourselves before a distaster but when disaster does strike do you want to be remembered as the dude who flipped everyone else off to save himself or are you going to be HUMAN and take care of your fellow survivors? You might not want to tell everyone that you’re prepared at first. However, don’t be the guy that people write about in Apacolypse books that has hordes of flour in your closet but is letting little kids starve. If you do, you’re a DICK and I hope the Zombies eat you first.

[3] Make it personal – Do you live in the desert? a snowy mountanous region? a flood region? prone to earthquakes? Do you have children? pets? special medical circumstances? Every plan is different but YOUR plan should involve your personal needs. For the purposes of this guide, I will be using my personal plan as an example. I have a husband, 3 kids and a dog and we currently live in a SW desert location that is prone to drought. It’s important that for any plan you choose to go with, you make it personal. Hopefully this guide will get you thinking about the common tips and turn them into personal choices.

GTFO Plan – This plan assumes that disaster is imminent or in progress and you are not safe in your current location. You are a girl on the go and you need to go NOW. You’ve seen it before… hurricanes, earthquakes, etc… people standing in line for food and water trying to find their loved ones in the chaos of a disaster. These people were not prepared. Hopefully, you will be!

Step 1 – SURVIVAL BAGS – Everyone gets one. This bag is your lifeline to survival. Every family member should have their own bag. If you have small children, these bags need to be easily carried by them or else you should ration their items into older children’s bags or adult’s bags. You may choose backpacks, rolling luggage, duffel bags, whatever kind you’re more comfortable with. Here are my basic tips for the survival bags:

[a] Small as possible – These should be as small as possible. You are on the go here. Weigh the value of items against their weight. Can you afford to leave something behind if the weight will slow you down? Rolling luggage is great but it should have alternate means of being carried. If there is rubbel on the ground, will you still be able to carry it?

[b] Clearly Marked – Every bag should be clearly marked with the name of the person it belongs to. In a rush, an adult can carry multiple bags but when you get somewhere safe you want to make sure you have the right bag for the right person.

[c] Clearly Non-descript – While you want to label your bags for convenience, you do not want bags that are labeled in big neon signs with “SURVIVAL KIT” or something similar. People suck, and more importantly, people suck even more if you have something they want/need during a time of disaster. If they see a bag marked as clearly being survival gear, you won’t own it very long.

Step 2 – WHAT GOES IN THE BAG?

[a] Water – Desert or not, you can’t live without water. We’re talking about 72 hours here so the amount of water needed is minimal compared to a long-term survival plan. But it’s still #1 on the list because water is the most important part of the plan. At a minimum, you need 1 gallon of water per person per 72 hours. Here’s your first major decision in your ZIP. Water is heavy. Your options are bottled water, bagged water from survival stores, or water purification techniques if you can be sure you will have a water source but might need to purify the water. The last option allows you to carry more of other items in your survival bag but assumes you have a water source. Make your decision based on possible scenarios but do so wisely.

[b] Food – You need to have a full 72 hours (3 days) worth of food supplies per person. If there’s an interest, I’ll expand on this topic in more detail but for now think about each person in your family and think about foods that are [1] light to carry [2] nutritional and [3] won’t go bad. Some suggestions are: granola bars, protein bars, dehydrated fruit snacks. You’re not worried about a balanced diet. You’re main concern is meeting minimum daily caloric and vitamin intake. If you have infants, pets, or members with medical conditions, remember to tailor their food storage based on their special dietary needs.

[c] Bedding/Clothing – Each bag should include 1-2 changes of clothes. If you have children, it’s especially important to update their bags every 6 months or so to account for growth. You will want to use clothes based on the time of year but also include extras “just in case” such as long sleeve vs short sleeve shirts, pants/shorts, don’t forget socks and underwear. It would be nice if your children could have a special pillow or blanket that they like but right now you’re just focusing on survival. Some great bedding options are inflatable pillows. They are lightweight and there are many options to choose from. Remember to bring along options for changing weather: poncho or raincoat for temperate climates, emergency heating blankets for colder climates, etc.

[d] Personal Supplies – Don’t skip on the personal items. The trauma of being caught in a Zombie Invasion can somewhat be averted by the comforts of home. In addition, you’ll be wishing you’d listened that first time you have to whipe your booty with a pine cone. The main thing here is to think about those every day things you use but take for granted. Some examples: toilet paper, feminine products, travel size toothbrush and toothpaste for each member, travel size hygene products (hand sanitizer, lotion, shampoo/conditioner), special medications, diapers/wipes for infants, small travel sized bag dispensor for pet refuse.

[e] First Aid Supplies – Whether you go with  a pre-packaged kit or you create one on your own, always think about your family and tweak that kit based on your personal needs. For example: diaper rash cream for infants, children’s tylenol, etc. The kit should be small and be placed in the survival bag of an adult. You may wish to equip each bag with a very basic kit in the event that members are split up.

[f] Miscellaneous Equipment – This is our “GTFO Plan” so your equipment options will vary depending on where you think you may end up after you get out. Are you absolutely sure you’re going to a safe location? Do you have a secret hideout available? Does it have electricity or whater? What items will you have when you get there? What items will you need during your travels? Some commonly recommended items include: can openers, dishes/utensils, shovel, radio, pen and paper, small axe, pocket knife, rope, duct tape, etc. These are your miscellaneous items that would be good to have around but I don’t really recommend you waste the space unless you believe you will need them. What I DO recommend is: small personal flashlights for each person (the wind up kind are best so you’re not reliant on batteries), a few candles, water proof matches, a lighter or two and, if you have the room, some of those small emergency flares.

[g] The Why-Didn’t-I-Think-of-That List – There are some items that people just don’t think about when their house is on fire and the zombies are crashing through the windows. Here are some special items that should be tucked away and some last tips while you prepare your ZIP:

[1] Personal Documents – Passports, legal documents such as Birth/Marriage certificates, vaccination records, insurance policies, etc. In the event that after your 72 hours goes by and you find you don’t have a home to go back to, you might really wish you had those important documents.

[2] Digital Records – dude, it’s 2011, the cost of portable, lightweight hard drives is insanely low right now. Everyone should own at least one and everyone should be backing up their digital files, family pictures, etc on one. Even if the zombies never come, one day you will thank me. That is all.

[3] Money money money – Are your credit cards readily available when you need to GTFO? Every bag should contain (in a well hidden location) a stash of cold hard cash. Not a lot, just enough to get you through an emergency. Twenty dollars, broken up in small bills and coins (not too many coins, those things are heavy) could mean the difference between getting on the subway or getting eaten by a zombie. You never know.

[4] Juice – make sure you have an extra cell phone charger for any cell phones you might bring as well as a few extra batteries for your flashlights if you opted out of the hand-cranked variety. It’s an investment but I highly suggest you buy manual crank devices versus the cheaper on-the-go variety. When your batteries die and you remember you didn’t pack extras because they were so heavy, you’ll be thankful for the investment.  I didn’t mention cell phones in the list because, well, who would leave the house without their cellphone? That’s just crazy talk.

[5] If Lost, call XXX – Every survival bag should have a zip-lock bag that contains instructions for dummies (i.e. kids and family members). Important phone numbers, google maps of safe places with directions, emergency response contacts, and most importantly, detailed plans for what actions to take if your are separated. Do you have a backup location if your initial survival destination turns out to be less than desireable? Include special medical information that pertains to the owner of the bag in case of accidents. If your child is on medication and is lost and subsequently hurt, the person who finds your child will know immediately how to take care of him/her.

[6] Location, location, location – You don’t want to be digging through the old Christmas decorations in the attic to find your survival bags while the zombies are downstairs eating your dog. Your bags should be located in a temperature controlled environment. You don’t have to have a special room, but you also don’t want them out in the garage if your garage reachs 100+ degree temps in the summer. A closet near the front or back door or a garage that maintains a stable temperature thoughout the year are good locations. You want to be able to get to them quickly as well as be able to inventory them every 6 months or so to ensure the items are still fresh and appropriate for your needs.

[7] Lastly, and I think very important for those with children, are special items. Games, favorite stuffed animal, any item that will keep your child busy or be a special comfort for them during a time of very high stress. When disaster strikes, you want your children to be comforted and as calm as possible. Pre-pack as much as you can, if you have the room for it. If you have some time, perhaps while you’re busy gathering up the survival bags to throw in the back of your hummer or whatever, let your kids grab a few special items. It will keep them out of your way while making them feel like they are helping.

Bunker Down Plan – I bet you thought I’d write another 55,000 words on the Bunker Down Plan. I’m not, and you’re welcome. The Bunker Down Plan consists of everything that the “GTFO Plan” contains with a few minor additions. A Bunker Down Plan assumes that a disaster has occurred but you will be forced to remain in your current location (presumably your home) for at least 72 hours.

Comfort > Weight – With the Bunker Down Plan, you have a lot more room to splurge. You want your basics from the GTFO Plan in the event that your bunkering fails and you have to GTFO but this is where your crazy tendancies get to flourish. More water, more food, more comfort items, more more more! Better to have an abundance than to go without.

When planning your Bunker Down Plan, think of situations that may occur (i.e. water/electricity outages, airborne pathogens, zombies that don’t know how to turn door-knobs) and how you can prepare yourself and your family for those situations. What will you need to survive those first 72 hours? (cough*see the GTFO Plan*cough) What will you do for those 72 hours to keep busy (i.e. sane)? What happens if those 72 hours turn into a week? a month? If I get any positive response from this post, I may write up my Zombie Invasion Plan Stage 2, The Long Haul, which revolves around extended bunkering in the event those pesky zombies don’t die of starvation as soon as we expect them to.

Real Life Farmville Rant

Here’s a super special rant from me to you. You’re welcome, in advance. My rant today is on the topic of: Why can’t we be techies and greenies at the same time? or Why isn’t there an app for that?

What started with a little homeschooling experiment has turned into a ridiculous obsession of mine. I want to learn how to homestead. I use that term in the most broad sense possible. I want to learn how to garden, cook, craft, prepare for emergencies, budget, go green, etc etc. These are not things that are part of my normal skill sets. I am a gamer and a tech-junkie. I am *not* a Suzy Homemaker. So to say that I’m out of my comfort zone is an understatement to the extreme, but I find that I’m utterly fascinated with all of it.

As a gamer, the first thing I did was enter the “research zone” – pick a topic (Vegetable Gardening, for example), search for “How To” sites, find related blogs, gobble up the info as fast as I could process it. This is how I’ve conditioned myself to learn more about games or to work through tough choices in a gaming environment. I’ve been on this quest for over 6 months and let me just say, I’m still a total noob! As a tech-junkie, I started scouring the web for software and apps that would give me a little “+1 to Gardening”. I have to say, totally disappointed!

This is where my rant starts to take shape. Listen up hippies: If you want people to be greener and go organic, realize that it’s 2010 (almost 2011) and (sadly) the majority of Americans aren’t out there growing their own hemp and looking for ways to turn it into curtains. The majority of us are addicted to our Facebook and our smart phones and we don’t know jack crap about what you guys are talking about. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to learn. We’re just completely overwhelmed by how much information is out there and how utterly disorganized it is!

When doing my “research” I had to try to learn which plants are related and will play nice with each other, which plants attract or deter bugs and animals, their growth cycles, their harvest cycles, blah blah blah. Why can’t they take the 800 million websites out there and create something smarter? There are two great sites I’ve found that provide tools for gardeners, PlanGarden and GrowVeg. They will let you “plan” your garden and send you basic reminders like “hey silly, did you remember to harvest your tomatoes?” but you have to know what you’re doing in the first place for them to be useful. That’s great and all but come on! I have a phone that can order pizza for me! I’m not afraid of the work, getting down in there and cleaning up goat poop or whatever, but I’m never going to get to that point if I have to get a degree in Agriculture first.

Why can’t they make an app that lets me say [1] I have this much land. [2] I want to grow XX type of food for XX amount of poeple? Let the program figure out all the other details like the proper placing of specific plants, companion crops, cover crops, and the tools required. Send a message to my phone when it’s time to buy seeds, fertilize, prune, harvest, etc. It’s hard enough for me just to keep the stupid plants alive! Stop drowning me in details!

I’m a big fan of learning things outside my skill-set but from a noob’s eyes, the ideal of homesteading is one thing, the actual implimentation is something totally else. I want to be healthier and live a greener lifestyle but I don’t live in a world where that’s common practice. I live in the world of disposable plastics and smart phones. If we are going to change our habits, we have to start small. A website with the latin names and descriptions of 8,000 plants isn’t starting small. Millions of poeple play Farmville every day, why isn’t there something like that but for real people? Are you really telling me that in 2010 we can’t load up our smart phones with some details and start making the planet a better place to live?

I realize my rant turned into a ramble somewhere in the second paragraph (ok, probably the first) but the more I learn about these topics, the more I’m dumbfounded that so many people are crusading for urban homesteads and greener technology but we haven’t even figured out how to use the tools we have available in our day and age. I want to teach my children how to be better stewards of the earth but I also want them to embrace technology as a positive tool in human development. The way things are, we feel like we have to choose between being techies or being greenies and it just seems like somewhere along the way someone should have figured out how to combine the two for Average Jane.

Droid post test

La la la la! La la la la! Droid X test!

Not Poor, Just Broke

Today we bought Droid Xs for myself and for my husband. After I received the final confirmation that the payment was recieved, I was overwhelmed by a total sense of awe. I had to sit down and have a little bit of a cry because the feelings were so immense that I honestly didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t put them on my credit card. I didn’t avoid paying another bill. I didn’t have to ask my family to go without anything in order to save up for them. If you’ve never been poor, you can’t begin to imagine the sense of accomplishment and dare I say amazement that you could pull something like this off. We’re still broke, but the mere fact that for the first time since I can remember I didn’t have to rationalize buying something for fun or going without in any way out of the ordinary, was a new and exciting experience for me.

I like to reminisce about a time in my teens when I discovered a weird and now favorite snack: cornflake and mustard sandwiches. When I tell that story I like to explain that I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to cook and we didn’t have a lot of groceries at the house at the time so it was a fun experiment. The fact is, we didn’t have groceries in the house for a very long time during this period. We ate when we had the money to eat and I tell this embarassing story as if it were just a fun and weird thing I tried when really, I lived on those sandwiches for weeks that summer.

Two defining things came about from that experience. Firstly, I am still to this day afraid to try new things. When you’re poor, you usually eat the same few things because that’s what you can afford. You get used to those things and it can be difficult to break those habits. As I got older, I had to really push myself anytime I was confronted with something new. I cried when my husband asked me to try curry once. Secondly, I am surprisingly good (considering my inability to really cook) at taking basic ingredients and making them into a good meal for my family. I am kinda great even at buying things on sale, in bulk, etc and making them into nutritional and sometimes even yummy meals.

SNIPPED: At this point I’ll tell you that there were about 8 more paragraphs about growing up poor and the lessons I learned because of it. I deleted them because after I vented the feelings all out, I honestly couldn’t justify sharing things so personal about my family. And, well, I’m long-winded and I knew no one would probably read it anways, lol. Needless to say, we were poor, my family is amazing and did the best with what they had. No one I know is perfect and I’m thankful for the life I’ve led, for good or bad. I hope that they’re not offended that I’ve shared this much already.

My mother had many sayings and one of them that has stuck with me is: “We’re not poor, just broke.” Every time she said it, I’d scoff, roll my eyes, and then under my breath say “no, we’re freaking poor”. As I got older I realized a fundamental truth about that saying. “We’re not poor, just broke” was my mother’s way of trying to teach us that money, or our lack thereof, afffected us but it did not define us.

I love my mother and she taught me so much in my life (if you’re reading this, mom, please don’t be mad) but I have to disagree with her this time. I think being poor did define me. It defined me for a very long time in fact. But I think it defined me because I let it do so. I honestly believe that you have to constantly be redefining yourself or else all those lessons and experiences were for nothing. I try every day to see a lesson in my past experiences and try to use those lessons to shape me into the person I want to become.

While I slightly disagree with my mom, I understand what she was trying to teach us. Sadly, it took me 30 years to really understand “we’re not poor, just broke” and it’s been a realization that what she was really trying to teach me was that I have the power to define myself. I wish that every time I had a profound realization (to me at least) I could take a snapshot of it in my head and download it into my children’s’ so it would never be forgotten. Maybe there’s an app for that.

Cataclysm – Spoilers and Dead Zone Worries

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm… four words… a gazillion emotions. Bloggers all over the web are in an uproar over the leaked info being posted on MMOC from the Cataclysm friends and family alpha testing which is supposed to be protected under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). On one side of the ring, you have the people who are completely excited about it or who simply think that the NDA is stupid. In fact, many of them are quick to note how much the leaks are actually helping Blizzard by increasing hype and gathering resubs. On the other side of the ring, you have the purists who believe that they should not be given any information and some who feel they shouldn’t even know what the expansion is about until they finish installing it and are provided with that very first video upon entering the game.

I’m stuck in the middle but leaning heavily to the “oh em gee, spoilers, gimme gimme” side. I want to respect the wishes of the anti-spoiler crowd but at the same time I want to be prepared for the expansion in every way. This isn’t some new game that you’re enjoying for the first time. It’s the 3rd major expansion to a game that many of us have been playing for years. Most everyone I know wants as much information as possible and a good handful probably would have stopped playing the game by now if it hadn’t been for the information being leaked in the past few weeks. Not to mention the ones who I know have already stopped playing because they just couldn’t handle playing the same old content, no matter how many patches have been released since the original release of Wrath.

As a guild leader, my first priority is to keep players playing. In second place is the desire to prepare my guild, as a whole as well as each member individually, to be as successful coming into the expansion as we can help them to be. As a player, I want to know that when I finish that installation, I won’t be running around grabbing or farming things that I didn’t realize I needed instead of out there with the rest of the population leveling my characters and getting into the new content.

I’m torn. I’m desperately glued to my screen with every leak that gets posted while consciously trying not to re-post every little thing I see. For my guild, I created a separate space on our forums for Cataclysm information and asked that people be careful of their post titles. If people see the Cataclysm tag and are anti-spoiler they hopefully won’t be offended by the post titles and can simply choose not to read those posts. There’s going to come a time when information is made so readily available and widespread that I will start to wonder if it’s time to let it go and get the information out there no matter what, anti-spoilers be damned! It happened in Burning Crusade when the release of Wrath was imminent, so I know it will happen again this time.

Spoilers aside, my greatest concern is the pre-expansion dead zone. That time when it doesn’t matter what awesome little trick Blizz pulls out of their hats, everyone knows and is anticipating the new expansion and couldn’t care less about the stuff between now and then. Every single expansion so far has been rough on our guild and with Wrath having been out for almost 2 years by the time Cataclysm is expected to release, I expect this one will be just as rough. We have our guild 4 year anniversary in September (seriously, where did the year go, seems like we *just* had an anniversary) so I expect (hope) that will help keep people interested enough to keep playing. We’re working really hard to come up with events outside of raiding that will keep interest in the game, everything from drinking games to gathering competitions.

So, a few questions off the top of my head:

Are you spoiler-free or in the gimme-gimme crowd? Has your guild posted any special info or rules on how to handle info on Cataclysm? Is your guild preparing for the expansion, and if so, how? What’s the atmosphere like in your guild; are people taking breaks, is raiding slowing down, or is there excitement all around in anticipation for Cataclysm? Lastly, any tips or ideas to keep members interested in the game and not “taking a break” before the expansion comes out?